The Socialist Party divorces the Spaniards

USPA NEWS - Only two Spanish political parties have ruled the country since the death of the dictator Francisco Franco: the conservative Popular Party and the Socialist Party. A third party, the Union of the Democratic Center, later converted into the Democratic and Social Center, and which was the first to take the reins of the country after the end of the dictatorship, no longer exists. Around these two parties that make up the backbone of Spanish democracy have emerged others with smaller size, less parliamentary representation and little chance of reaching the Government of Spain. Now it governs the Socialist Party, but is it doomed to disappear from the institutions?

The arrival of the Socialist Party to the Government of Spain in June of last year was not without controversy. The current Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez reached power through a motion of no confidence supported by the Catalan separatist parties, the Basque independence and the extreme left represented by the Podemos coalition. After assuming the Presidency of Spain, the Prime Minister has been forced to "pay" the favors received and their concessions to the pro-independence and the far left have not been understood by their own voters. From within the Socialist Party itself, prominent leaders criticize the permissiveness of Pedro Sanchez with the Catalan independence fighters.

A recent poll commissioned by the newspaper El Mundo reveals that almost half of the voters of the Socialist Party disapprove of "the Government's dialogue policy with the independence parties." Only 47.6% support the Government's policy on this matter. With regard to the need to reapply in Catalonia Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which includes the intervention of Catalan institutions and their control by the Government of the nation, and which was applied by the last Government of the previous Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, 44.7% of Socialist voters consider the measure necessary.

If the split within the Socialist Party is important, even more so is the divorce between the Spaniards and the Government of Pedro Sanchez. 64.4% of Spaniards believe that the Government is making economic concessions to Catalonia for political reasons. 68% of Spaniards are opposed to the granting of pardons to the leaders of the independence prosecuted and seven out of ten Spaniards are in favor of intervening the government of Catalonia.

Recent polls reveal that, if legislative elections are now held, the union of the conservative Popular Party, the centrist Citizens and the extreme right represented by Vox would evict the Socialist Party of the Government, even if the Socialists won the elections. That possibility, identical to what happens in the region of Andalusia, where the Socialist Party will lose the government after 36 years of hegemony, worries Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who is willing to go until the end of the legislature, in 2020, in an attempt to redirect the situation. Despite its triumphalist message at the end of the year, the feeling among Spaniards is that the Government has only approved effective measures without a real meaning during its first seven months in office. The foreseeable rejection of the budgets for 2019 also threatens the continuity of the Government.